Resource locator databases have been around for a long time. Early locator databases were passive. For instance, a yellow pages telephone book comprises an early and rudimentary locator database wherein the locations of thousands of merchants can be identified with relative ease. With the advent of ubiquitous computing devices and wired and wireless computing networks, interactive resource locator programs have been developed for accessing locator database information. These locator programs enable a computer, phone, personal digital assistant, etc., user to identify locations of resources such as restaurants, gas stations, ATM machines, etc. Merchants and other service providers desire to be included in locator databases so that consumers that require products or services offered by the merchants and that rely on the locator databases to find providers can consider the merchants as potential providers.
Interactive program based locators have several advantages over passive databases like phone books. First, interactive program based locators can use minimal user input (e.g., a provider name, a general location, a type of provider sought, etc.) to examine large provider databases extremely quickly and narrow down options to a small desired subset. For instance, when used to locate restaurants of a particular type, a processor based locator can quickly examine all restaurants in a given geographical area and present all options within the area relatively quickly. Second, interactive program based locators often include graphical interfaces that can be used to show an area map and locations of resources sought relative to landmarks in the area. Graphical maps reduce the burden associated with finding a resource. Third, interactive program based locators can be tied in to other software programs such as direction generating programs, resource provider web sites, independent provider review web sites, etc., that can generate detailed directions for a consumer to find a particular resource, provide information directly from the provider and/or provide independent reviews of provider services and/or products.
Visa provides at least one interactive program based locator service for locating automatic teller machines (ATMs). To this end, a service user can use any Internet enabled device (e.g., a computer, a mobile phone with Internet capabilities, etc.) to access a graphical Visa ATM locator web site. Once the locator site is accessed, a user can specify a general area (e.g., by city and zip code) and the locator program uses the general area to locate all ATMs within the general area. The locator program then presents a map of the general area and provides a separate icon for each ATM within the general area along with ATM addresses.
While program based locator systems are quickly becoming ubiquitous, one problem with such systems is that location information stored in the locator databases used by locator service providers can be inaccurate as businesses relocate and/or go out of business and as other businesses start new operations in new locations. In addition, in many cases locator service providers rely on business owners to provide location information for the databases and that information cannot be easily verified or audited. For instance, in the case of the Visa ATM locator service, despite efforts to maintain all ATM locations accurately in a database, at any given time about 10% of the location information in the Visa databases is inaccurate.
When a consumer uses a locator service to attempt to locate a resource provider and location information is inaccurate, the consumer quickly comes to view the locator service as unreliable. In addition, failed resource location activities damage brand impression for both the locator service provider and the resource provider that the consumer was unable to locate or had difficulty locating. For example, when a consumer uses a locator service to locate a coffee house and then walks five blocks to reach the coffee house location specified by the locator service only to find that the coffee house is no longer at the specified location, both the locator service provider and the coffee house suffer brand damage and the coffee house will likely loose a sale (i.e. assuming that the coffee house is still operating at a different location).